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1 Letting Others Do Wrong Tyler Doggett•Tdoggett Letting Others Do Wrong Tyler Doggett•[email protected] 1/2/20 Feel free to cite, quote, or distribute Abstract: It is sometimes, but not always, permissible to let others do wrong. This paper is about why that is so. One of my closest friends lies inveterately. The lies are low-stakes, almost always bits of puffery about himself. When I hear him telling others these lies, I never stop him, never say, “Things didn’t actually happen quite like that.” I have never even told him I think he shouldn’t lie to people. But I do think that—he shouldn’t lie. The seventeenth century vegetarian activist, Thomas Tryon, abhorred meat-eating, thought it barbarous, brutifying, cruel, diseased, distasteful, distemperate, dreadful, evil, gluttonous, infirm, nauseating, oppressive, unclean, and violent.1 He married an omnivore. There is no evidence he even tried to stop her meat-eating. This paper is about cases like these and about when and why it is permissible to let others do wrong. 1. Background Consider a fictional case: Vegan believes it is impermissible to eat meat. However, he lets his dining partner, Omnivore, eat meat; he does not, for example, throw her beef burrito in the trash when she uses the restroom or try to confiscate her plate of bacon. To boot, Vegan doesn’t ever start up a conversation with her on the issue of whether it is permissible to eat meat. No “You shouldn’t do that” or “Do you know what it’s like for animals” or… Assume Vegan’s conduct here is permissible. Why is it? If Vegan believes what Omnivore does is wrong, why is it permissible to let it go? In what follows, I mostly ignore belief. I make the simplifying assumption that Vegan is in fact correct and that eating meat is wrong. This isn’t my view, but it makes things easier if we assume it is correct—if we assume that it is wrong to eat meat and so assume that it is impermissible for Omnivore to eat meat. Yet also it might be true that it is permissible for Vegan to let Omnivore eat meat,2 where by “let,” all I have in mind is that Vegan is in a position to stop Omnivore but does not. You let your tiny baby crawl across the floor but don’t let Congress pass various bills even though it is true that you stop neither Congress nor the baby. The Vegan/Omnivore case is underdescribed, but there are ways of spelling it out, I think, in which it is permissible to let Omnivore do wrong, permissible not to confiscate Omnivore’s meat, not to stop her from feeding herself, not to shout her down as she tries to 1 The adjectives—or cognates of them—come from Tryon’s entry in Williams 2003. For discussion, see Stuart 2008. 2 I also believe it might be true that it is permissible for Vegan not to start up a talk with Omnivore about eating meat. Though my focus is on preventing wrongdoing, in what follows I do sometimes look at talking about wrongdoing. Importantly, I do not think of speaking up about wrongdoing when one can’t stop it as a way of letting others do wrong. Such cases are sensitively discussed in Driver 2014. 1 order meat at a restaurant, and so on. In other words, it is permissible for him to let her do wrong. The question I am interested in in this paper is: In cases in which it is permissible to let others do wrong, why is it permissible to do so? I start to answer it by answering a different question: Why is it permissible for Vegan to let Omnivore eat the burrito? I make three distinct assumptions here: First, there are cases in which it is permissible to let others do wrong. Second, I assume that if meat-eating is wrong, if Vegan should not eat meat, then garden-variety meat-eating cases involving Vegan and Omnivore are cases with such features. Finally, I assume that making progress on explaining why it is permissible for Vegan to let Omnivore do wrong helps us to make progress on why, in general, it is permissible to let others do wrong. Someone might object to the first assumption and insist that it is never permissible to let others do wrong. This objection would be mistaken. Consider Alicia, readying to kick you in the shins simply because you bother her. Her kicking you in the shins is wrong. According to the objection, it is wrong for you to tolerate this; you are required to stop her. What if the only way you can stop her will trigger her fatal heart condition? In such a case, it is clear that you are permitted to let Alicia do wrong here and, in fact, are required to let her do wrong here. Hence, it is not true that one is always required to stop wrongdoing; one is sometimes permitted to let others do wrong. Or consider my friend, Bob, the inveterate liar. Bob lies to his mom about trivial matters. He does wrong in doing so. All the same, it is not wrong for me to let him do it. There’s no requirement to disconnect the phone before the lie comes out or to spirit his mom away before it does. Walking away is permissible. So it is sometimes permissible to let others do wrong. So the question I am interested in doesn’t have a false presupposition. The project of the paper might be objected to in another way by insisting it is always permissible to let wrongdoing go. When you let someone do wrong, you never do wrong yourself. So there is a question here—why is it permissible for Vegan to let Omnivore do wrong?—but it is an easy question. This objection would also be mistaken. The Vegan/Omnivore case contrasts with the following case: Abuser abuses children. His friend, Pacifist, never stops him. In humdrum ways of filling in the details of the Vegan/Omnivore case, It is impermissible for Omnivore to eat meat. Yet It is permissible for Vegan to let Omnivore eat meat. In humdrum ways of filling in the details of Pacifist/Abuser, the analog of the first claim is clearly true: It is impermissible for Abuser to abuse. Yet the analog of the second is false. It is false that It is permissible for Pacifist to let Abuser abuse. Pacifist is morally required to stop what Abuser does. So this objection, too, is misguided: It is not always permissible to let wrongdoing go. It is sometimes permissible to let it go, sometimes not. When is it permissible? Why? 2 The short answer is: It’s complicated. There are all sorts of explanations and portions thereof. You might be permitted to let someone do wrong because Satan will bring a catastrophe upon you if you don’t. You might be permitted to let someone do wrong because, well, he’s your son, and it’s no big deal, and how is he supposed to learn if you don’t let him screw up every now and again? You might be permitted to let someone do wrong because you promised them you would stop interfering in their everyday life, even in their occasional, wrongful shoplifting of bananas. None of the Pacifist/Abuser cases I am interested in are like that. Neither are the Vegan/Omnivore cases. Yet even in simpler cases, the story is complicated. 2. Caution There are cases where you may let others do wrong and are genuinely unclear about whether they do wrong, and it at least seems like there is a connection between those two facts. More precisely, in some cases, people genuinely do wrong, but it isn’t clear to bystanders whether they are doing wrong and so the cautious thing to do is to let the wrongdoing happen, and this at least partly explains the permission to let others do wrong. Here is a possible case: Cece has to give money to one of two charities. She will either give ten dollars to one or ten dollars to the other. The first charity means the world to her. It is, however, a front for some minor wrongdoing that Cece’s donation will fund and that would not happen without Cece’s donation. The second charity is unremarkable and you know that donations to the second charity are morally permissible. You think that first charity is a front and that donating to it is morally wrong but are not confident. Cece gives to the first. You let her. It is permissible to let her do moral wrong here, and this at least seems to be partly because it is unclear whether she does wrong and, at least partly because of that, the cautious thing to do is to let her do wrong, and it is permissible to do the cautious thing. We can spell out the meat case in a similar way: Stipulate that Vegan is not confident that eating meat is wrong and not confident whether restricting Omnivore’s autonomy is. Stipulate, too, that Vegan is quite confident that no instance of meat-eating is particularly seriously wrong and neither is any instance of stopping meat-eating. No big deal all around. It is permissible for Vegan to let Omnivore do wrong here, and this at least seems to be partly because it is unclear she does wrong and, at least partly because of that, the cautious thing to do is to let her do wrong, and it is permissible to do the cautious thing.
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